My Worst Nightmare...

My worst nightmare realized today, when I looked above my bed. Those are my pillows. That is where I lay my head at night. That is a spider. A big spider. A spider that could easily fall on to my head while I'm sleeping. Or onto my face. Or into my mouth. Or get tangled in my hair. My worst nightmare realized. You can bet I'll be checking and double checking the wall above my pillows each night, and the ceilings and the surrounding walls.
I won't even tell you the rest of the story--of how I tried to kill it with a flyswatter and how it fell to the pillow, then somewhere behind my bed. And how I ripped my bed out from the wall searching desperately for the spider corpse. Which I finally found. But I know spiders. I know they play dead all the time--all shriveled up, folded legs...all dead looking. And when you walk away, they unfold their little furry legs and scurry away. So I made sure he was dead. I squished him with the metal handle of the swatter. But his wrinkled spider corpse is still there behind my bed. Just below the place where I lay my head, where I seek peace and solace each night. I still feel like he may come back. He may reappear and seek revenge. I won't believe he's really gone until I somehow convince my husband to pick him up in a little ball of toilet paper which I'll watch go swirling down the toilet and out of the house and into the sea somewhere. Then I'll really believe he's gone. But then I wonder if his spider friends will be upset and haunt me--the one who took this little hairy life and flushed it down the toilet.  I'll wake up in the middle of the night and there will be not just one, but five spiders dangling precariously on the wall above my head--watching me, contemplating my breathing. Deciding how to repay me for the loss of spider life.